Too Many Years. Too Many Tears

Arsenal are Premier League Champions.

I have said it out loud. Quite a few times now.

Campeones Olé Olé Olé…I have been humming since last Tuesday night.

The streets of London are filled with red-and-white shirts, songs, scarves, tears, beer, and release. Somehow, it still feels fake.

I’m 41. I’ve carried the Arsenal badge since 1998.

That’s nearly three decades of my life locked into a postcode I don’t live in.

I didn’t grow up walking past Highbury. I don’t have a season ticket. Heck, I have never even watched a match at the Emirates.

I was 19 when The Invincibles happened.

Twenty-two years later. It’s here.

The trophy lift is done. A red-and-white mist has descended and enveloped London.

I’m in Mumbai. It’s 3:30 AM.

Crying.

I am spamming everyone’s timeline. Photos. Stats. Retro kits. Endless reels.

I am being completely, unapologetically unbearable.

People should unfollow me.

I am making the loudest digital noise because the physical reality around me is dead silent.

A few kilometres away, the screenings are packed. Pubs are tearing the roof off.

I didn’t go.

I couldn’t go.

Too many years. Too many tears.

This isn’t a party for me. It’s not about just shouting and dancing for me. I can’t take a sacred, agonising, two-decade-old relief into a crowded bar for high-fives over a pint.

It’s not done yet.

The release hasn’t finished with me.

I am still sitting here in the quiet. Blurry eyes.

Every time a new video loops on my phone — every time I see Declan, every time I see Bukayo — my heart swells until it hurts.

And Mikel. I can’t even comprehend my feelings for that man. He didn’t just rebuild a team. He changed my life.

He gave me back my pride.

That’s the trap of the global fan.

They tell us we aren’t real.

Not local enough.
Not born into it.
Not from there.
Not part of the fabric.

Because love needs a postcode. Because we are our locations on our X accounts. Because devotion stamped in passport ink counts less than devotion born beside a turnstile.

Let them.

We learn the songs before we learn the streets. We know the players before we know the pubs. We understand the grief before we ever understand the geography of where that grief lives.

We are the ones who built cathedrals out of midnight alarms, buffering streams, and impossible longing.

The banter, however, reaches us just fine. The “bottler” jokes never needed a visa. We took every “Warra trophy for Assna” humiliation straight to the chin through classrooms, offices, and bedrooms, where nobody really understood why a weekend draw ruined our entire week.

We answered for mistakes made on a pitch we’ve never stood beside.

We inherited all the trauma. But the physical release belongs to the streets of London.

For me? The happiest night of my life, and I am processing it alone in the dark, thousands of miles away.

I am hearing the roar through my noise-cancelling headphones, but I wanted to feel that noise in my bones. I wanted to see strangers crying and know exactly why. I wanted to hug someone and know we survived the same twenty-two years of punishment.

Instead, I am watching it through a phone screen.

On Sunday, I wasn’t there.

Next week, when they walk out in Budapest, I won’t be there either.

I won’t be at the parade.

It hurts.

There is no brave way to say it. It just hurts.

My voice is cracked. My room is silent. But I still chant North London Forevaaaa into my pillow until my lungs give out.

I will again — next Saturday.

The stadium has lived inside me for three decades.

Last Sunday…alone in the dark, it finally came home.